Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) (2 page)

             
“So, I hear we’ve got some love birds out on the ranch,” Emma said under her breath to Dee as they leaned against the corner of the brick bar, supposedly to entice men to come in. The sad handful of men who’d already been lured inside were either too broke or too drunk on whatever Crazy Mack passed off as whiskey to pay any attention to a couple of skinny working girls waiting outside.

             
“What are you talking about?” Dee whispered back, a pathetic smile that was supposed to make her look alluring plastered across her face.

             
“Jack was in here two weeks ago for his usual,” she said, rolling her eyes and making a face. “and he said the old man at Carson Hill Ranch was advertising for wives for his sons.”

             
“Really? Which sons are getting married?” Dee asked, forgetting to pretend they weren’t having a conversation. Crazy Mack banged on the large front window of the bar with the thick plank of wood he kept handy for breaking up late night brawls, pointing a black-nailed finger at the girls and gesturing for them to knock it off.

             
“Does it matter?” Emma answered after Crazy Mack went back to wiping shot glasses with the hem of his shirt. “Have you ever seen all of ‘em up close? When they stand together, the six of them make you think you’re seeing paradise. I’m just saying, they don’t make ‘em ugly at Carson Hill, if you know what I mean.”

             
“I ain’t never seen any of ‘em up close, just when they come through town to do some shopping. By damn, I’d marry one of the little boys if it would get me the hell outta here,” Dee promised with a surly glance in Mack’s direction.

             
“Well, I don’t know about ‘little’. The youngest ones have to be getting big by now. The preacher told me last week that Old Man Carson’s wife’s been gone for at least ten years.”

             
“When have you been speaking with the pastor, Miss Church on Sunday?” Dee teased, purposefully bumping into Emma with her hip as they danced for a small cluster of workmen who’d just stepped off the bus from the fertilizer factory.

             
“That’s between me and his money,” Emma said with a knowing look.

             
“Well, if they’re the two boys I’m thinking of, they’re a good bit older than twelve. Even if they’re only boys, I wouldn’t mind teaching them a thing or two,” Dee hinted. “Every boy needs a good teacher, am I right?”

             
“Don’t even think about it,” Emma warned her. “The Carsons don’t come in here. Their father would skin them alive and you know it.”

             
“Well, then maybe I need to go out to the ranch and see what all this marrying business is about. I could see myself as a rancher’s wife, especially on a place as big as Carson Hill,” Dee said haughtily.

             
“Of course you could. You could teach everyone on the place all about mating!” Emma said with a good-hearted snicker. Crazy Mack banged on the window again. “Of course, getting away from this one would be rough. He ain’t gonna let you go without making you sorry.”

             
“Honey, he’s been making me sorry ever since I stepped off the bus. I knew this part of the state was still a dangerous place, but I sure never thought I’d end up hiking up my skirts for sweaty factory guys and ranch hands for thirty bucks a pop, and that’s before Mack takes his portion. I been doin’ this so long, it’s a wonder I haven’t died of something nasty.”

             
“Yeah, and that ‘nasty’ is what’s gonna keep you off the Carson ranch. They’re so high-and-mighty, they wouldn’t spit on you if you caught fire right in front of their eyes.” Emma continued dancing, turning toward the man who stepped into the shady bar, hoping to catch his interest. She lowered the strap on the flimsy cotton tank top she wore to advertise what she had to offer, but it was a sad state of costume as Mack was too cheap to even send for halfway decent clothes for the two working girls he owned.

             
“There’s no damn sense in paying for fine clothes for these filthy jerks to leave their stinking stains all over ‘em,” he’d once said, ordering the girls back to their rooms above the bar when they’d asked about having decent clothes. “Besides, they ain’t interested in what you’re wearing, they want what you’re hiding underneath.”

             
Emma and Dee let their minds wander to what living on Carson Hill Ranch could have been like if they’d answered an ad for a bride from a dating site instead of falling for the Craigslist ad for waitresses and bar dancers, speculating quietly about husbands and children, clothes, and a home of their own.

+++

              Casey turned off the ignition on the pickup truck and slid out to untie the heavy bundles tied down along the sides of the truck bed. He hefted them onto his shoulder and went into the local store, pushing the door open with the toe of one weathered boot.

             
“Morning, Casey,” Samuel Peterson called out from on top of a ladder leaned against the high shelves that kept all of his stock off the ground and away from the dust that constantly seeped under the door. “What can I do for you today?”

             
“I brought some more hides from the last round of slaughter,” he answered cheerfully, lowering the two bundles to the floor in front of the counter. “We can take credit to trade for a few things, or cash, whichever’s easier for you.”

             
“Of course, let me just grab these things and I’ll get my book.” He returned to his work and left Casey to wander among the shelves while waiting for the store owner to finish his business. Sam operated one of the last bastions of the Old West, something that looked very much like the great-great-grandchild of the old mercantiles. He sold a little bit of everything, both farm tools and makeup, but also operated a great online business in trading. Sam would take the hides of the Carsons’ hands, and find a buyer in the leather market, while keeping a little commission for his time.

             
Casey’s eyes gravitated toward the small rack of irritatingly feminine shoes, some gleaming in different colors and with ludicrous high heels, and he shook his head, wondering how much of that useless stuff Peterson ever managed to sell. Any woman who arrived in these parts would need sturdy boots and clothes that could take the punishment of everyday life, a life that would mean tanning hides, growing vegetables, and feeding the crew of kids that every farm needed. Living out here was a daily effort to survive—economically, that is, not life or death like in the olden days—even for a family as well-off as the Carsons.

             
The shoes made him think of his mother for some reason, and the talk his dad had had with him almost a month ago. Casey didn’t remember much about his mother, other than that she always smelled nice and had soft hands.
The memory of her couldn’t be right,
he thought.
Because no woman could have made a home for her family out here and kept her hands so soft.
Those hands would have been bandaged because of the nearly daily wounds of the hired help and the six boys who ran wild on the farm, cooked four meals a day for nearly thirty hard-working men, and washed the clothes of an entire army of ranchers who would have been hell-bent on rolling in any patch of dirt they could find when working the cattle.

             
But somehow, that’s what he remembered about her. Even more than her face or her voice, he remembered a sweet lilac smell and a soft touch to her hands. Somehow, it was hard to reconcile the same woman who had fancy dishes and floral-printed sofas put in at the ranch house to being the same kind of woman who would have helped his father build up the Carson property into what it is today.

             
“Let’s take a look, Casey,” Samuel said behind him, jarring him from his usually forgotten thoughts. Casey turned and untied the hides, laying each one out on the weathered countertop as Samuel slid his laptop over to the counter. Samuel measured each one as Casey unrolled them, recording the different thicknesses and measurements in a spreadsheet in his computer. He offered a more than fair price for the hides, holding out a rubber-banded ledger book for Casey to sign his name. Even with high-tech equipment and online trading, a man’s signature was the most important part of the deal, and Casey liked it that way.

             
After giving Samuel his list of supplies and watching as the store owner tabulated the trade, he marked how much credit the Carsons would have in the shop for the next time they came into town for supplies. Samuel helped him load the household items into his sacks and secure them in the back of Casey’s truck, putting a hand on the door handle when Casey started the ignition.

“Wait, there’s mail for you,” he said, waving his hands at almost forgetting. He dashed into the side room of the store that served as the small town’s post office and came back with a small bundle, handing it through the open window to Casey and watching as the cowboy tossed it on the cracked upholstery of the passenger seat. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice when it came in there’s a flyer announcing an auction just east of here. Didn’t know if your family might be interested in bringing in a new breed at your place.”

              “Hmm, sounds interesting. Did they say how many head?”

             
“I can’t remember now,” the gray-haired man said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on his shirt. “I want to say it was somewhere around two hundred head of redback and one hundred head of stroud. The owner up and moved away after they foreclosed on some of his property, and didn’t leave any kind of forwarding address. Someone has to buy ‘em up quick or they’re gonna starve in the pasture once the grass is gone. And you know all the milking heifers are drying up, what with no one doing the milking. Animal control has been going out once a week and checking on ‘em, making sure they have fresh water and stuff like that, but now they’re state property. It’s a shame that it’s just going to waste, but that’s the way of it here when the money runs out.” 

Casey nodded thoughtfully.
Good thing the Carson ranch was overrun with family and ranch hands,
he thought to himself. With a wave, he put the truck in gear, then turned in the direction of the ranch and settled in for the one hour ride over unpaved, packed dirt and grass, looking above the visor of the truck to make sure his gun was in its holder, in case he needed it during the trek.

             
“Dad, I received this announcement in the mail when I went into town today,” Casey said, holding out the crudely printed paper with information on the upcoming auction. He pointed to the list of livestock and farm tools, making a special note of the spools of fencing. Apparently, the owner had acquired a few hundred additional acres and was readying the extra parcel for pasturing when the money ran out. That was the shame of it out here, a lot of newbies came along thinking farm life would equal a simpler, less stressful time, but every rancher knew that any family was always one solid drought away from losing everything they had. “That fencing will come in handy, especially if the river keeps coming up over the banks and taking out the posts. I was thinking we could move our current fence to the other side of it, away from the water’s edge, and build a support that would keep the herd from getting out through the water. We’d have to build it up some, but we’d spend far less time building fences than we'd spend fixing them.”

             
Anders, Casey’s other middle brother, looked up from his computer and took off his glasses, nodding at Casey’s logic and looking to Dad for approval. Anders had been born small and stayed indoors most of the time, but that made him an excellent ranch manager. None of the others minded having the fourth son learning to run the vast farm, not when there was physical work to be done that he couldn’t do. Everyone contributed on a ranch, and this was Anders’ strong suit.

             
“I would ordinarily say it sounds like a fine idea, but I can’t say that now,” Bernard stated. He looked to Anders, who looked at Casey before quickly ducking his head back into his numbers, recording the transaction Casey had made in town that day and mostly busying himself with anything but the conversation at hand.

             
“What’s wrong with their stock, Dad? I know we’ve never raised stroud before, but it could be a good mix. I heard in town that they’re a long-haired breed, not really suited well for Texas, but if we introduce them into our herd, they might make our stock hardier for winters up north. We could sell a better animal at a higher price if the farmers up there knew these were bred with something that tolerated the winter well.”

             
“Yes, you make an excellent point, son. But I meant that the auction will not be going as planned. A buyer has come in and taken the whole parcel, the land, house, equipment, and the stock.”

             
“Oh,” Casey answered, not surprised as news of the auction was at least a month old. “That changes things.”

             
“Not so very much, it doesn’t. We could still establish the breed with this other farm. That parcel is only two miles from the edge of our northern boundary line,” Bernard continued, “and I do expect to have a good relationship with that ranch, once the buyer moves in.”

             
“Well, we can hope for the best but snatching up entire lots of land tends to make men greedy out here. I’d be more worried that this new owner might be just another idealistic new guy or some hippie who thinks he’s going to sit around on his porch and eat free-range chicken eggs all day. With our luck, he’s going to be another pseudo-environmentalist who thinks we should raise cattle because meat’s deadly and their farts destroy the ozone layer or something. Besides, if there’s a route through that parcel we can take when we drive the cattle north, he may want to charge us some hefty fees for passing through,” Casey continued, a worried frown creasing his sun-browned features. Bernard only smiled.

             
“Yes, I would fear the same thing, if I didn’t know the owner so well,” he continued, his eyes dancing as he smiled. Casey looked from his father to Anders once again, bemused when his younger brother suddenly snapped his laptop closed and fled from the room with it, his pencil still in hand. Casey stared after him before turning a wary eye on his father, but Bernard only laughed. “Yes! I’ve bought the ranch! For you and your wife!”

             
Casey’s shoulders sagged in defeat as his father opened this wound again. “What are you talking about, Dad?”

             
“This! This came today! The answer to the ad! I bought the land the same day I submitted your dating profile,” Bernard explained as he pointed to an open email on his screen. Casey looked at the screen and rolled his eyes at the swirly font and formal greeting.

             
“Dad, any woman who writes like this isn’t fit for the ranch. She’s practically writing a poem, going on and on about the ‘wondrous landscape of the frontier’ and the ‘challenges that seem insurmountable but can only be overcome by man’s natural desire for exploration’. Is she writing a book, or answering an ad for a ranch wife?” Casey closed out the email and turned to him with his hands on his hips, readying himself for battle against his father’s matchmaking.

             
“So we help her be fit for the ranch, both her husband,” Bernard gestured to Casey, who threw up his hands in defeat, “and the staff of the ranch. It’s not like there are no women here, women who can show her what needs to be done. They’ll help her learn. She is obviously very smart and well-educated…”

             
“…which means she’ll be useless the first time she has to boil down lard and smear it on a maggot-infested hindquarter…”

             
“…and eager to see the land. She sounds exactly like the kind of daughter I need here to make this place a home again and to make sure we don’t lose this ranch in an auction on the day the last of us dies in our beds.” Bernard was no longer laughing but rather, reminding Casey of the reason the neighboring property became available. “This ranch is my legacy to my sons, but what will you do without someone to leave it to? Will you have it broken up on the auction block and sold off in pieces to the highest bidder? Like a scrawny cow that can no longer give and is going to be someone’s dinner?”

             
Casey didn’t answer. Passing on the ranch someday to children of his own was something he instinctively knew he would do but at the moment, he was too busy doing the work of the ranch to think about the future of the ranch. With fences breaking daily, cattle to feed and repasture twice a day, and a staff of dozens to oversee, there simply wasn’t time for giving any thought to dating, no matter how eager his father had been to sign him up online.

             
Bernard took his silence to mean agreement. “Wonderful! I will send a reply right away and invite her down here. We’ll need to get to work constructing a small house until you two are actually married, it’s only polite...”

             
“Why do we have to build her a house? She can stay in one of the rooms upstairs,” Casey argued.

             
“Oh, she will stay in an upstairs room. It is you who have to live outside. It’s only fitting. We’ll give her the terrace room that adjoins the one beside it, in case she wants to have friends come visit and see her new home.” Bernard continued muttering to himself over the preparations as Casey stared after him in horror.

             
I’m moving out?
he thought miserably, shaking his head.